The Cherry Orchard

Tragedy looms over the characters from the beginning. The auctioning of the estate hangs over Ransevskya and Colin Richmond’s design, with its barren stage and dirty white walls, make it feel like the place is already out of her hands.

Director Rachel Kavanaugh has gathered a fine ensemble cast together and each actor adds their own layer to proceedings. Chekhov's characters cling to the past as if it were a life raft, rattling out the same phrases and reminiscing over a more prosperous time. These characters no longer live, they merely exist, rattling around the estate and starting to resemble, in spirit at least, the feeble manservant, Nikolayevitch (nicely played by veteran actor Leonard Fenton). The play is well paced and well directed with some perfectly timed pauses.

Josie Lawrence captures Madame Ranevskaya's airy quality perfectly. She stomps around the stage literally tearing up her past by ripping up her letters from Paris and twirling amongst the men who dote on her. In a nice contrast to Lopakhin who is rooted in the reality and deals only in facts, Lawrence’s character doles out money as if it were water, unwilling to face her bleak future.

John Ramm’s portrayal of Lopakhin is pleasing in its complexity. Instead of portraying him wholly as a villain, he plays him as a prickly and peculiar individual with failings and frailties.

Despite some fine acting, there is a recurring problem in terms of tone and balance and the cast do sometimes struggle with this; the rapid shifting between the tragic to the comic is a tactic that sometimes leaves the audience confused. That said there's much to enjoy here in a production of a play that feels all too resonant.

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